


There Will Be Blood

by cristianoronaldo



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M, post apocalyptic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:13:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cristianoronaldo/pseuds/cristianoronaldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sergio curiously traced a streak of freckles across Fernando’s cheek, and in a world full of brutality, he was gentle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Will Be Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [londoneyedgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/londoneyedgirl/gifts).



> There aren't really any graphic descriptions of violence, but I put that just in case you find certain sentences graphic.   
> Post-apocalyptic AU. If the world building is confusing, it's because you're not meant to know everything, but if you do want to know everything, comment and I will tell you what I had in mind. 
> 
> I'm officially taking fic requests because my Christmas break is starting.

The first time was slow, and the lights were off. Sergio could hardly see, but he felt with his lips, kissing where he could reach-- chest, ear, forehead, finally finding lips.

 

Fernando was quiet beneath him, except for the way his breath hitched, and he spoke with the stutter of his hips, the low groan at the back of his throat, the way he threw his neck back and exposed it.

 

Breathless devotion spilled from Sergio’s lips; he was sighing, speaking between words. Sergio moved once, somewhere between a thrust and a desperate plea, and Fernando covered his mouth with his arm. He bit down hard, a bruise blossoming to trace in the morning.

 

Afterwards, the sheet felt thick, and the air felt warmer, and Sergio felt like something was being obstructed within him, something he used to breathe, to think, to feel.

 

“Good?” He asked, leaning back against the crumpled pillow. He threaded his fingers through Fernando’s hair.

 

“Good,” Fernando decided. He waited for Sergio to look away before swallowing and raising his fingers to the mark on his neck. His eyes flickered shut, and Sergio turned back to stare.

 

He curiously traced a streak of freckles across Fernando’s cheek, and in a world full of brutality, he was gentle. Fernando kept his eyes closed, but his lips parted.

 

“We could open the blinds,” Fernando said, looking up at Sergio for an answer. They were only staying in the abandoned house for a single night.

 

He shook his head, tapped his index finger to his lips as if someone was listening in. “No,” he said quietly.

  
  
  
  
  


They were preparing to dig another one when a group of strangers approached them in the dust. There was a short one in front of the pack, dark hair nearly obstructing his vision. He had a look in his eyes like darkness, like something was missing, as if that hardened look had once been youthful, but something had sapped him of his strength to put on a show.

 

“What are you doing here?” He asked, throwing his rifle over his shoulder. He held his shoulders straight, like a soldier.

 

“We don’t want any trouble,” Sergio said, holding up his shovel. He set it down on the road carefully, next to an overturned car. A half-decomposed body was hanging out the window, green and gruesome, painted with a red-black smile.

 

“I didn’t ask what you wanted,” he said, nudging the rifle with his hand. “I asked what you were doing here.”

 

Fernando shifted beside Sergio. He set his shovel down too, wiped his hands on his pants, looked around sullenly.

 

“Are you looking for food?” Rifle Boy saw Fernando setting the shovel down, so he nodded to his men and they dropped their weapons; he remained in possession of his own. “Because a group of scavengers just came through. Everything is picked clean besides what we have, and we’re not willing to share.”

 

Sergio nodded. He opened his mouth to reply, but Rifle Boy--

 

“Hard times,” he said. “You know?”

 

Sergio nodded. Fernando didn’t move because he knew they were hard times, but times were a hell of a lot harder when people weren’t willing to help each other out. Sacrifices, he thought, were what humanity was meant to be built on.

 

“No, we understand, but you don’t have to worry.” Sergio’s hand twitched at his side, a muscle in his jaw jumping in unison. “We have our own food.”

 

Rifle Boy watched Sergio thoughtfully for a moment before he bit his lip, briefly turned to the man to his right (tall, blue eyes, didn’t look sharp at all-- Sergio thought he could beat him just in case--), and nodded. Sergio let out a quiet sigh of relief.

 

“As long as you don’t bother us, we won’t bother you.”

 

“We don’t want any--”

 

He held up his hand. “I know. You don’t want any trouble. We’re just curious what you’re doing here.” He frowned at the ground. “And what those shovels are for. You know they’re not very good weapons. If you check the houses, some kitchen knives might be left.” He glanced down at his rifle. “We’d offer you some of ours, but--”

 

“Hard times,” Fernando cut in smoothly, unsmiling. “So we’ve heard.”

 

Sergio gritted his teeth. He forced a smile, but didn’t answer.

 

“What, you hunt-- for food? Or are you one of those fools trying to rebuild everything?” Rifle Boy spoke directly to Sergio.

 

By “everything”, Fernando thought, he meant the world, or what they knew of it anyway. He meant buildings and streets, stadiums and houses, shops and walls. But Sergio shook his head, no. They weren’t walking to build.

 

“We dig,” he said. “Graves. We dig graves.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because there’s so much carnage, and at some point, the destruction should be buried. Besides, people deserve to sleep. How can we rise out of the ashes if the fire is still burning?” He looked away, not overwhelmed, just swept away.  

 

“I don’t know,” Rifle Boy said after a long time. He chewed the inside of his cheek like he was turning it over in his mind. “I guess we don’t.”

 

His men looked bored behind him. One of them picked his nails, another eyed his weapon like it was the hand of a loved one, held for comfort, clutched in sorrow. Only the tall one beside the leader showed any interest in Sergio and Fernando.

 

“Well,” Sergio said after watching the taller one, waiting for him to pull the knife out of his pocket and surge forward. “If we don’t--”

 

He let it hang there because if they didn’t rebuild, if they didn’t continue, if they didn’t bury the fire of mankind’s destruction, there would be no intake of breath. There would be no finishing sentences, or starting them, or dancing on the empty highways. There would be no more watching the tide sweep over the land, tucking feet under blankets, watching the stars fade into morning. There would be nothingness in its barren simplicity.

 

Rifle Boy nodded, said, “There’s land up ahead that will be good for digging."

 

Sergio nodded, and understood it for what it was. "We'll get the bodies and leave."

  
  
  
  


Sergio stood on the fresh dirt. They were a few miles south of Madrid. They hadn’t spoken much since the run-in with rifles.

 

"You shouldn't have done that," Sergio said. He clenched his hands into fists, unclenching them just as quickly when he saw Fernando looking.

 

"I know," Fernando replied, scraping the dried mud off his knuckles with his newly-acquired knife. "We don't steal from bodies. I know. I just thought we needed a knife just in ca--"

 

"Said that," Sergio cut in to clarify. "You shouldn't have said that when he had a gun in his hands."

 

Fernando's eyes darkened, and he folded his arms across his chest, small, tired, hopeless in his silence.  

 

"He could have killed you in a heartbeat just for insulting him."

 

"He wasn’t going to kill me."

 

"You know how the world is now." Sergio was seething, his knuckles raw, throat hoarse.

 

He needed a haircut, but Fernando didn't dwell on it. "I know, but he wasnt going to kill me, so."

 

Sergio looked at him for a long time before turning back around. He stood on the very top of the grave, the ground so soft his sneakers were sinking in, marking the grave with the footprint-- the DNA of the new age-- of The Gravedigger.

 

They were near a bridge, on the soft previously grassy (now muddy) picnic area beside it. The bridge was quiet, and the benches were torn up. Someone was impaled on a wooden plank from one of the older benches. Fernando said he looked like a hero, and Sergio said he just looked dead.

 

The city beneath the bridge was ruined. The streets were charred, and the bodies were such messes that even Sergio didn't feel like building them a resting place. They were ugly, broken things, resembling humanity's true form more than they ever had in the days of their beating hearts.

 

They walked under the bridge after that. They pitched their tent, and Sergio pulled Fernando close to him like he always did, the blanket tucked so tight around the two of them that Fernando felt like his hands were tied behind his back.

 

“Don’t do that again,” Sergio said.

 

And this time, Fernando didn’t misunderstand. He nodded, tucking his head between Sergio’s neck and chest, mouthing nonsense against his collarbone. He kissed where he could reach, and then Sergio bent his head and Fernando moved to capture his lips.

 

“I won’t,” he promised.

  
  
  
  


They were breaking into a vending machine at one of the malls. One of the first bombs had gone off there, so it was mostly death and rubble, streaks of red (paint, Fernando told himself) coating the walls. The tiles were slick with dust, whether human remains or nature’s own burial ritual, they couldn’t tell.

 

Sergio nudged Fernando’s arm, nodding to the machine.

 

“That one,” Fernando said, pointing.

 

Sergio smiled. “Not the chocolate milk this time?” He wrapped his arm in a sweatshirt to clear the remaining broken glass.

 

“No. Drinking spoiled milk wasn’t exactly the highlight of that last trip.”

 

“Yeah? What was the highlight of that trip?” Sergio smirked. He reached inside, grabbed the last granola bar, and tossed it to Fernando, who caught it deftly with one hand.

 

“Fucking,” Fernando said, ripping the package open with his teeth. “On the roof.” He bit into it, harder than normal because it was stale. It crumbled, some of it falling down his shirt. He brushed at it blindly with his hands, eyes trained on Sergio.

 

He saw the way Sergio was looking at him, so he carefully wrapped his granola bar up in his backpack, shouldered it, and turned around. “Not here,” he said. “We can fuck in the tent. Just not near all that blood on the wall. It creeps me out.”

 

They buried three more people before they returned to the tent. Fernando turned to look behind them, shading his eyes from the afternoon sun. Little mounds had sprung up, like life in a graveyard.

 

“You know, if someone were to follow us, they wouldn’t have a very hard time. They’d just follow the graves.”

 

“Yeah, well.” Sergio was looking down at his feet, not focused on the conversation. He was making a mental checklist in his head: water, new shovel, extra knife, new shirt.

 

He scratched his neck when he realized Fernando had been talking. “Why would people be following us?” he asked, as if he hadn’t missed a thing.

 

Fernando shrugged. “Curiosity.”

 

“Would you follow someone halfway across the country simply out of curiosity?”

 

He shrugged again. He felt for his water bottle, tapped it once, cocked his head to hear the sound it made, and shook his head. “Water,” he said.

 

“Top of the list.”

 

The List was something they started right after The Event.

 

(They spoke of things in broad terms now. The List was the only list that existed. The Event was the only event that mattered. When they encountered people without weapons, they became The Strangers, because only the most recent strangers were relevant. The ones with weapons were identified by their weapons (Rifle Boy) because their only significance was the threat they posed.

 

Nothing was individualized anymore. There was no “I met Edward and Katrina at the grocery store today, and we talked about their house on Redwood Street.” It had become “We came across The Strangers where the first bomb hit, where the rubble is, where my house used to stand.” People lost their roots. They wandered, and they attacked, and slowly they began to kill themselves off.

 

They wrote lists to survive. They carried their lives in backpacks. Their best moments occurred in portable tents with holes to collect rainwater).

 

Sergio had the better memory of the two of them, surprisingly, so he kept it all in his mind. Water was first, always, then food, then supplies. They could live without a tent for a few days since it was starting to get warmer, but the late spring showers were still catching them unaware.

 

“What’s the list right now?”  

 

“Water,” Sergio said. “Just that, and a new shovel.” He picked at a scab on his hand. “But we can hold off on digging for a few days.”

 

Fernando looked up at him curiously. “But you always said people needed to sleep in their graves.”

 

Sergio stopped in front of their tent, finally, and he practically collapsed inside. Fighting exhaustion, he leaned into the plastic bag full of leaves they used for a pillow, and murmured, “They can sleep on the road. We do it every night, and our lungs are still filling with air.”

 

“For now,” Fernando muttered, and he rested his head on Sergio’s chest.

  
  
  
  


It was winter again, and they were in a different city.

 

(People had started to flood into Madrid, so they had to abandon the bodies there. On their way out, they saw strangers digging them up, searching their pockets for food, water, weapons. Someone ripped a tooth out of a young man’s mouth and stuck it gleefully into her own. She’d needed a replacement.

 

After that, Fernando felt sick, and he couldn’t stay, not even to clear their way out of the city, not even to bury the dead in their path. His voice must have been filled with desperation, or maybe Sergio saw it too because he didn’t question Fernando. He shouldered his shovel, left the body where it was-- unburied in the hard earth-- and walked on).

 

“I just don’t understand it.” Fernando clasped his hands behind his neck, staring up at the stars. “I don’t understand how one person can make me so happy and millions of others make me feel like we deserved this.”

 

“This?”

 

Fernando held out his arms. “This,” he repeated, and Sergio could almost see the images of The Event in his mind.

 

He was silent, but he pressed his lips to Fernando’s temple, trying to convey what he couldn’t put into words.

  
  
  
  


They found a football hidden in a bush behind a group of people they had to bury. They washed their hands on the grass still wet from the light showers, and Sergio challenged Fernando to a match, one on one.

 

“I’m not very good,” Fernando assured him, before lunging forward, stealing the ball, and dancing around him like he’d been doing it all his life.

 

Finally, Sergio brought him down with a well-timed tackle, gently pulling Fernando down with him. He rolled over to trap Fernando beneath him with a triumphant grin. “I think I win,” Sergio said proudly, and it had been a long, long time since Fernando had seen that kind of smile grace Sergio’s lips.

 

“What are you staring at me like that for?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like you’ve never seen me before in your life.”

 

Fernando shrugged, and he reached up for a kiss, but Sergio held his shoulders down. “Nope, not yet. I have to keep you wanting more.”

 

“Since when does Sergio Ramos play hard to get?” Sergio was momentarily distracted, and Fernando moved forward to press their lips together.

 

Sergio pressed a hand against his chest, pushing him back down firmly. “Wait,” he said, very seriously, “I want to try something.” He touched his hands together like he’d forgotten how to move, and his eyes slid away from Fernando before quickly returning, alight with something reckless. It died quickly in his eyes as the words died on his tongue.

 

“We should get going,” Sergio said, looking down at his hands. He had dirt under his fingernails and caked in the prophecy line on his palm.

 

“Yeah.” Fernando wiggled underneath him, and Sergio hopped off.

 

He went immediately to his backpack, starting shoving everything inside without even folding it carefully. He always took the time to inventory, fold, and call Fernando over for a second check. They were neat and organized, and that was what had kept them alive for so long.

 

Sergio ran his fingers through his hair like he expected it to be longer. His movements were shaky, and he nearly tripped over the tent. He had trouble putting it away even though he’d done it a thousand times.

 

Finally, Fernando walked over to help and they folded it up together. Their hands connected, and Sergio blushed, turned away and smiled when he realized he was blushing over something so silly.

 

“Me too, you know,” Fernando said, and he brushed Sergio’s hand with his fingertips, and he felt like he was at the galaxy’s edge.

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1.) Obviously the title of the work is not mine. I have never seen the movie, but I was having a conversation with my mother this morning about a movie and somehow that film came up, and I knew the title would be perfect. (title explanation at the end of these numbered things) 
> 
> 2.) I'm sorry for the number of post apocalyptic fics I do, but I just love them so much. 
> 
> 3.) Rifle Boy = Cesc. At first it was going to be Iker, but then I remembered the point of the story wasn't to make it all about Iker like I would have done. The point of the story is to focus on the lives of two individuals when the world around them has fallen to pieces, not to focus on the events of how it all ended, etc. It's about human kindness in a place that isn't kind, which sort of reflects how the world is now tbh, not to be all doom and gloom or anything. 
> 
> And that actually brings me to my title explanation: There Will Be Blood refers to the fact that there will be more bloodshed in the future, and it's really turned into these two people vs. the world. There will be tons of horrible shit happening later, but (and not to be cheesy, but sorry) at least they have each other.


End file.
